Optimization of Container Shipping Network Reconfiguration under RCEP

Abstract

Due to its advantages of large transportation volume and low transportation cost, container shipping has become an important transportation mode in current international trade. The recovery of the shipping industry in 2021 and the signing of RCEP make the reconfiguration and optimization of the container shipping network a very important task at present. The network service capability is an important factor affecting the container shipping network. Based on the complex network theory, the coefficients of port location, the importance of distance and route among ports are taken as the service capacity reconfiguration coefficients of the global container shipping network. A max-min mixed integer model is established for global container shipping network reconfiguration. A sort of communication-reducing conjugate gradient method based on Krylov Subspace (CR-CG-KS) is proposed to reduce the reconfiguration computation. The results show that the global container shipping network does not need large-scale reconfiguration but requires small-scale changes to optimize the network feature vector centrality and make the network more balanced and stable. This study is beneficial for business managers to proactively respond to the future development of the shipping network and improve the operational efficiency of the global container shipping network.